For more than 20 years, Wendy Duggan, who has died aged 84, provided and supervised all the animals on the BBC programme Play School. In so doing, she played a telling if inconspicuous part in the life of children throughout the nation. Every Wednesday, she was key to the success of Pets Day, when animals such as rabbits, chimps, puppies, donkeys and, most notably, her cockatoo Katoo, entertained and enthralled the young audience.

Sometimes she and her husband, Ron, would take Katoo and some of the smaller animals to the studio on the bus from their home in Putney, south-west London. There were caged birds in every room, at one time as many as 150, each lovingly cared for and each with its own story. Duggan was regarded by her colleagues as embodying the soul of Play School; she was caring and gentle yet possessed the confidence of expertise. Quietly eccentric, and with an aristocratic bearing, she was also a very private person who had extraordinary social connections yet was always a model of discretion.

She was born in London. Her father, Hugh Jones, was an architect, and her mother, June Dobson, was a socialite descended from the 17th-century painter William Dobson. After attending the Royal Hospital school in Suffolk, Wendy studied photography under Cecil Beaton. This introduced her to a world of celebrities and royals – she attended the wedding of Antony Armstrong-Jones (later Lord Snowdon) to Princess Margaret. Yet her true love was working with animals and particularly birds, a passion she inherited from her maternal grandfather who kept tropical birds at his home in Lodsworth, West Sussex.

She married Ken Duggan, an interior-design company director, and began breeding birds and showing them, often at stately homes, winning many prizes. Parrots were her speciality and her general Dr Dolittle qualities soon became apparent to the BBC. In 1964, the founding producer of Play School, Joy Whitby, hired her for the programme. Duggan's connections with the Zoological Society of London, of which she became a fellow in 1976, enabled her to provide all manner of animals including a baby elephant. The animals under her care were always safe and never exploited. She managed to ease the apprehension of the crew towards certain creatures, particularly snakes, but inevitably, things didn't always go to plan. Katoo would often nip the presenters and once, during a rehearsal, an eagle was spooked by a sound boom, flew up into the studio lights and showered the cast and crew with its droppings. On another occasion a baby chimp began to urinate on the studio floor during a live broadcast, necessitating the presenters to speak more loudly.

After Ken's death, Wendy married Ron Riches, a former airline pilot, in 1968. Through her BBC connections she became a friend to many actors and celebrities including John Le Mesurier, Elaine Stritch, James Beck and Tony Hancock. On one occasion Hancock, who shared her love for animals, insisted on accompanying her to Charing Cross hospital, where she was overseeing the x-raying of rabbits to show children that the process was not harmful. He brought the radiology department down with laughter.

She continued to supply animals for BBC children's programmes after Play School ended in 1988 and retired 10 years later.

She is survived by Ron.

•Wendy Eveline Duggan-Riches, animal adviser and ornithologist, born 31 January 1928; died 20 February 2012